 At
last year's Ohio Cichlid Association Extravaganza, I, along with
Mike Solito and Bill Sensor, obtained twelve young Apistogramma
“Gold” borelli. We then split the group into
3 groups of four. We each had two females, an “almost positive
male” and one mystery fish. They were all approximately 1-inch
long. My four borelli were placed in a community 20-gallon
high tank with 16 Amblydoras hancocki which were about
2 inches long. The tank was set up with a sponge filter, glass lid,
and for lighting two 48-inch strip lights that are used to light
the whole row of tanks. The decor was many large pieces of Java
fern, several 1-inch diameter pieces of PVC cut at 6 inches long,
and six fistfuls of oak leaves. The oak leaves mimic a more natural
setting for the Apistos. Also the leaves soften, acidify, and leech
tannins into the water. This will give the water its tea coloration.
The oak leaves were collected in the fall of 2000. I took them directly
off the trees, to help keep the possibilities of contamination by
chemicals to a minimum. Some people suggest boiling the leaves first.
I chose not to boil my leaves.
In March of this year, my foursome turned out to be two pairs. The
male is larger with a solid yellow head and his body is a silvery
blue. His dorsal fin is twice as high as the females’. Both
his dorsal and anal fins are sharply pointed and longer than the
females’. The females are not a bland looking fish by any
means. They are yellow with a black lateral line, a black vertical
strip across the eyes, and the first two rays of the ventral fins
are also black. The subdominant male was given to Mike to ensure
that he had at least one male. My trio was now moved into a private
tank of their own. I provided a ten gallon tank with a glass lid,
sponge filter, 3 pieces of 1-inch diameter PVC, 3 handfuls of fresh
oak leaves and a baseball sized clump of Java moss. No lighting
was provided and it got just indirect sunlight. The 3 pieces of
PVC were placed in three specifically designated areas of the tank.
The first piece was in the far back left corner of the tank. The
second was placed in the front right corner and the third was placed
directly in the middle of the tank. All pieces were set to face
forward so that I could see all activity inside the tubes. The borelli
were fed twice a day; live black worms or frozen blood worms in
the morning and golden pearls (from Brineshrimp Direct) juvenile
diet in the evening. Now the male was approximately 2 inches and
both females were about 11⁄2 inch in length. Within 30 days
of being moved into the 10-gallon tank, both females began to fill
out in the mid-section. The females had taken up residence in the
two farthest apart tubes, leaving the middle most tube empty. It
will become obvious why this tube was unoccupied in a moment.
Females had become more intensely yellow with their lateral line
becoming much more solid and thicker black. The male remained in
his usual stunning color scheme but just a little brighter. The
male chose to spawn with the female in the far back corner first.
The eggs were laid on the top inside of the PVC tube. There were
at least 50 eggs. They were small at only about 1 mm and pink in
color. They hatched out on the fourth day. The pH was 5.5 and the
temperature was 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
The female guarded the
eggs and the wigglers, which were kept on the floor of the PVC tube.
The male had moved on to the other female’s tube and spawned
with her. The eggs again hatched in four days and were kept in the
tube until free swimming. Now here is where that third empty tube
came into play. Now that the first set of fry were free swimming,
the female became very protective of them. The second set of fry
was about 2 days from being free swimming and this female was also
very protective. The male was now relegated to sitting on the top
of that third empty tube. He was allowed to have about a 2-inch
square of the tank to move. If he swam or floated too far in any
direction, he was severely punished. After about 14 days of this,
his area had slowly expanded to almost the entire tank.
The fry seem to grow
in spurts making the rearing of fry seem painfully slow. The fry
are a brown spitting image of their mothers. The have a black lateral
line that runs the entire length of their bodies. They were fed
microworms for the first 2 weeks and live baby brine shrimp after
that. The fry were left with the parents for 1 month then removed
and put into a 10-gallon tank. Within two weeks of removing the
fry, both females had spawned again. These fry were removed 2 weeks
after free swimming and place in the 10-gallon fry tank with their
older siblings with seemingly no ill effects.
These fish are small, beautiful, and power packed. They are not
afraid of going head to head with any other fish, especially during
spawning and when fry are around. All you need is a ten gallon tank
and some time and you will have yourself a gorgeous set of dwarf
South American cichlids. |
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